​Using Google makes people overestimate their own intelligence, study says

People across the world have become used to turning to Google and Yahoo to look up information and advice on a whole host of topics, but a new study shows that search engines are actually inflating people’s perception of their own knowledge.

In a study called
“Searching for Explanations: How the Internet Inflates Estimates
of Internal Knowledge,” researchers conducted nine different
experiments that suggested those who learn something online feel
they are smarter than those who learn it through books or via a
teacher.

The findings were published in the American Psychological
Association Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, where
researchers said that “searching the Internet for explanatory
knowledge creates an illusion whereby people mistake access to
information for their own personal understanding of the
information.”

With the help of functional MRI images, the study’s authors saw
that people using the internet to uncover their information even
saw their individual brains as more active.

One of the experiments involved showing one group of people the
answer to a question via the internet and another group the
answer via a printed page with the same information on it. After
absorbing this data, the groups were asked a second question on a
completely different topic. Despite neither group being able to
search for the answer, the people who previously read their info
online believed they were smarter than the non-internet group
did.

Researchers also highlighted that this phenomenon could
potentially contribute to the hardening of political beliefs, as
internet searches increase the perception that one’s viewpoint is
more solid than an opponent’s.

“The Internet is such a powerful environment, where you can
enter any question, and you basically have access to the world's
knowledge at your fingertips,” lead researcher Matthew
Fisher of Yale University said to the Telegraph, which first reported on the
findings.

“It becomes easier to confuse your own knowledge with this
external source. When people are truly on their own, they may be
wildly inaccurate about how much they know and how dependent they
are on the Internet.”